Question: Does the Save Block patch work when applied to a hack that is already in progress? I tested it and it doesn't seem to cause any problems, but you never know.

Regardless, I'm still having problems getting the Variable hack to work even on a clean FR rom. I've tried in numerous times and the results are always the same:

1). The givepokemon command ceases to work. Well, it works but it will always give me a ??? Pokemon.
2). It messes up the unaltered scripts in Palette town. Warping to the town out of your house for the first time activates one of the level scripts and displays some text that Oak says at one time or another.

I'm 99% sure that I followed all the instructions correctly (and the Flag hack gives me no such problems, BTW), so what could be going wrong here?